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Janet Murray

1. Engineers

I know that it’s not the core of what we are reading but I’m struck by Janet’s use of ‘the engineers’ throughout the article, as in ‘The humanities and arts became more visible to the engineers as …’. It is almost as if we are a breed apart. Are we? Why and is it a good thing or is it something that needs addressing?

Knee jerk reaction I know but I see from Wikipedia that Janet is ‘a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the director of graduate studies in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. ‘ To good effect, I have collaborated with journalists at UQ on various projects and also built an interdisciplinary course with engineering and journalism students. We obviously need more of this because our ‘communities of communication’ need to work across discipline if we are to ‘understand the world and our place in it’.